Free The Culling by Steven Dos Santos

voice booms through the plaza. “The time has come for you to take your place and s erve. Come join your fellow Recruit!”
    The cameras scan the crowd before homing in on Gideon’s face. Unlike Ophelia, Gideon doesn’t look confused, just resolute, as if this is exactly what he’s been expecting all along. It doesn’t surprise me. I remember him being an outsider at school, always the butt of one joke or another just because he was smart and withdrawn, not fitting in with the rest of us. But he was never afraid. He stood up to anyone who gave him a hard time, even if it resulted in a beating. It’s this same determination I see etched on his face now. He turns and hugs some indiscernible figures behind him, then marches forward and up to the platform next to Ophelia as if he’s making his way past the snickers in the school corridors. The crowd stares at him in awe, and in relief that he’s spared one of them, I’m sure.
    Cole twists and turns in my arms. “I wanna go home!”
    “ Behave yourself . It’ll all be over soon.” But a chill courses through me as I realize that for Ophelia, Gideon, and their loved ones, it’s just beginning. Just like it was for Cass on that terrible day two years ago, when the sound of his name being announced ground my heart to pulp.
    I look at him now. His back’s still to me. I fight the urge to rush up to him, turn him around so I can look into his eyes, make sure I can find the hint of disgust that I know has to be there. He wants to change all this. He will change all this.
    Won’t he?
    The jumbotrons go dark and the images flash faster. You can feel the crowd’s anxiety like a chilly film coating everything.
    A clash of cymbals reveals the likeness of the third Re-cruit, a beautiful girl with long raven hair and green gems for eyes.
    “She’s pretty,” Cole says to me.
    “Yes, she sure is.”
    “Cypress Goslin,” Cassius announces. “Your opportunity to attain the highest level of citizenship awaits you. Come and begin your new life!”
    The feeds cut from the photo to a live shot of Cypress staring directly into the monitors, cold, fearless. When the Imposer arrives to pull her away, she rips her arm out of his grip and marches forward and up the stairs to take her place besides the statue-like Gideon and the quivering Ophelia.
    Cassius clears his throat. “Here you have the first three of our brave new Recruits. Only two slots left. Two more opportunities to be a part of the greater good that is the Establishment. And just who will join them now? Who will step up to the podium without fear and assume their responsibility as a citizen of this noble society?”
    The screens go crazy this time, flickering faster and faster, creating a disorienting strobe effect. Around me, I catch a series of snapshots of Cole’s frightened face, Mrs. Bledsoe with tears streaming from her eyes, and Cassius’s profile as he turns his head—the flare of his nostrils, the twitch in his cheek—and in that instant I know something’s wrong.
    The jumbotrons explode with color, and then everything goes dark before an image appears.
    There’s a disconnect between my eyes and my brain. The face I’m seeing … it’s not possible. It’s too much of a coincidence. We were just talking. Things like this don’t happen to people you were just talking to. They happen to strangers, or people you barely know. Not him . One look at Mrs. Bledsoe’s grief-stained face hammers home that it can happen to anyone.
    “Digory Tycho!” Cassius announces.
    But hearing it has no more impact than seeing that face plastered five-stories high on the surrounding screens. It can’t be true. I can’t let it be true.
    Mrs. Bledsoe squeezes my arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Her voice sounds as if it’s echoing down a long tunnel.
    I can only stare ahead, suddenly forgetting how to speak.
    “Are you okay, Lucky?” Cole this time.
    His soft voice penetrates the numbness. I have to keep calm, if